A WINDOW cleaner who returned to the homes of elderly customers to steal from them is behind bars on a four-year sentence after being branded "wicked".

Andrew O'Donnell picked out targets he thought would struggle to describe or identify him because of their advanced years even though they knew who he was.

The 40-year-old career criminal struck twice within the space of three days in March in the Thorntree area of Middlesbrough, Teesside Crown Court was told.

Judge Stpehen Ashurst heard how O'Donnell tricked his way into visiting a sick woman and then stole £100 after her trusting husband allowed him into their home.

The couple had no idea that he was a serial burglar who was on prison licence for a 2014 offence, and has robbing people’s houses since he was a teenager.

A second victim – a man of 85 who lived alone in a bungalow around the corner from O'Donnell's home – was targeted just days later, prosecutor Harry Hadfield said.

The man has since suffered a fall, is now seriously ill and been taken into care, the court heard.

Defence lawyer Garry Wood said: "There is very little by way of personal mitigation. The defendant doesn't wish me to say a lot, other than he lost his father earlier this year and he has had a long-standing addiction to heroin."

Judge Ashurst told him: "To commit such an offence against an elderly gentleman was a wicked thing to do, but unhappily it has been part of a pattern you have established over many years.

"You have got a 25-year record for committing burglaries, some of them very serious, and you have been locked up time and time again.

"You committed an offence on March 14 against an elderly couple, that was a distraction burglary. Targeting the elderly seems to be your stock in trade."

O’Donnell, of Cinderwood, Middlesbrough, was jailed for three years and four months after he pleaded guilty to burglary and theft, and a further eight months for the second theft.